39% of employees admit they’ve fallen asleep in a meeting at some point in their career. And fair enough — because boring meetings will surely make you sleepy.

If you can’t cancel your meeting or it’s impossible to make the meeting shorter, what option are you left with? Making the meeting more engaging. A highly interactive and interesting call will help your team stay awake and contribute to the conversation! Luckily, there are plenty of virtual meeting engagement tools to help you do this and we’ve gathered up the top 11 here.

What is a virtual meeting engagement tool?

A virtual meeting engagement tool helps make meetings more engaging. There are a ton of creative ways to help capture attention when you’re not face-to-face with your audience. Quizzes, reactions, and collaborative brainstorming processes are some of the most common ways meeting hosts try to make meetings more interactive. But organizing these engagement boosters can be time-consuming when done manually, so loads of software companies have risen to help make running meetings easier (and more fun).

Why is virtual engagement important?

Running a business remotely or even in a hybrid work environment is very different than doing so in person. People are working on assignments at different times of the day, it’s much harder to read body language, and managers find it difficult to accurately see if employees are happy or are understanding the conversation. Creating engaging ways to run meetings helps teams connect in the virtual world, which in turn improves things like:

• Talent retention, as employees feel more interested in their work.

• Relationship building across teams, as they find better ways to communicate together.

• Career growth, as managers can better see how employees are doing and see where team members need help.

Benefits of a virtual meeting engagement tool

Each virtual meeting engagement tool offers specialized benefits that serve a specific team or problem, but generally, any tool should also give these benefits:

• Increased flexibility: teams can work asynchronously across multiple time zones or schedules.

• Ability to ideate collaboratively: in a virtual setting, which mimics the in-person experience of drawing on a whiteboard together.

• Real-time feedback: and progress updates.

• Instant communication: directly in a project document.

• Creative inspiration: from trying something new or using a template.

11 of the best virtual meeting engagement tools

1. Fellow

Fellow is the AI meeting assistant and notetaker that helps teams automate the mundane part of setting up calendar events. Teams can create and share meeting agendas ahead of calls, track notes and action items with AI, and collect AI insights after every call.

Key features:

• Access a library of 500+ templates for team-wide meetings

• Get instant feedback from coworkers

• Embed rich media (such as Loom videos, Figma files, Miro boards, and QR Codes) in meeting agendas

• Comment and reactions in asynchronous and synchronous meetings

Price: Starts at $7 per user per month

Learn more about Fellow’s plans

2. Mentimeter

Making interactive presentations is what Mentimeter does best! There are occasions when you don’t have spare time to run an icebreaker at the start of the call or interrupt the conversation to open up a new virtual meeting engagement tool, so Mentimeter created a presentation platform where you can integrate games and quizzes directly into your slide deck!

Price:

• A free plan is available!

• Paid plans start at $17.99 per presenter per month for the basic level

Key features:

• Conduct live polls and quizzes

• Run a Q&A session during the presentation

• Build your own presentation slides or use templates

• Create word clouds (which is great for visual learners!)

3. Slido

Slido is another top-performing interactive presentation software. Users love that Slido allows them to collect anonymous feedback during meetings, which can be helpful during town halls, sprint retrospectives, brainstorming sessions, or product interview meetings. Slido differs from Mentimeter in that you can use Slido to integrate with your existing presentation platforms like Microsoft Powerpoint, Webex, or Youtube.

Price:

• A free plan is available!

• You can pay per event, starting at $90, or pay an annual subscription, starting at $240 per year

Key features:

• Launch polls, quizzes, and surveys

• Create event-specific content for conferences and webinars

• Generate analytics dashboards on meeting engagement performance

• Integrate with existing presentation platforms

4. Miro

For teams looking for a robust brainstorming option that mimics an in-person whiteboard experience, Miro is the software tool for you! The platform is awesome for product developers, project managers, and anyone else who needs to visualize ideas and processes in one place. You can work in real-time with your coworkers, add comments, and share boards with guest users.

Price:

• A free plan is available!

• Paid plans start at $10 per user per month

Key features:

• Virtual whiteboard with plenty of objects, sticky notes, and text options

• Library of templates to get you started

• Limitless board size

• Integrations with your other project management and meeting platforms (like Fellow!)

5. Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a popular quiz tool used often by schools. It’s a web-based application with which teachers or meeting hosts can create a quiz before or after a presentation. Users can connect from anywhere using their own devices—all they’ll need is a code that the meeting host shares and they can easily join the competition!

Price:

• The starter plan is available at $15 per year

• You can pay for a one-time event starting at $375

• Team plans start at $44 per user per month (with a minimum of 3 users)

Key features:

• Create teams that can collaborate on quizzes together

• Access and share quizzes with other Kahoot! community members

• Connect from multiple device types and remain anonymous

• See the leaderboard in real-time to keep adrenaline high

6. Coggle

Coggle is an intuitive tool for collaborative mind mapping. Like Miro, it’s great for brainstorming or visualizing process flows in real-time with your team. Many users recommend Coggle based on how easy it is to learn and use, making it a great option for anyone new to meeting engagement tools. Plus, it’s super affordable.

Price:

• A free plan is available!

• Paid plans start at $5 per month

Key features:

• Intuitive interface and simple shape and colour options

• Unlimited amount of diagrams available for creation

• No-set-up collaboration so guests don’t need an account to start working with you

7. Mural

Mural helps teams increase meeting engagement by offering a digital whiteboard space to express ideas and draw plans. Consultants and executives can leverage Mural to map out their strategies and tactics. Similarly, researchers can collaborate in the same workspace to share results and analyze findings together.

Price:

• A free plan is available!

• Paid team plans start at $9.99 per member per month

Key features:

• Access the huge template library or create custom templates

• Summon participants to a mouse location to maintain focus

• Comment and chat directly in the workspace

8. Zoom Polls

If you already use Zoom, you should take a look at how Zoom Polls can bring your meetings to the next level. Zoom’s poll feature is available directly within the platform already, so you don’t have to worry about adding another integration. Better yet, you’ll track all the poll data if you choose to save a recording of your meeting.

Price:

• This feature is included in the Zoom Webinars package starting at $106 per month per license

Key features:

• Create polls and custom templates ahead of time

• Automatically launch polls and see live results within a Zoom call

• Maintain a record of poll results after the meeting ends

9. Jamboard

Jamboard is a digital whiteboard tool, and it's a Google product that syncs seamlessly with other Google products like Google Meet. Anyone with a Google account can create unlimited free Jamboards, where they can make lists, track findings, and draw out solutions. This tool is a great solution for creative teams as it enables a handwriting feature—so bring out your tablet and get drawing!

Price:

• Jamboard is free!

Key features:

• Super simple interface and easy collaboration

• Ability to join or start a Google Meet call directly from your Jamboard

• Virtual laser pointer helps draw attention to the board (which is great for explaining project solutions!)

10. Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere specializes in making asynchronous meetings more engaging and meaningful. Used often by schools, Poll Everywhere has great reviews for enabling icebreakers, helping teams reach consensus, and facilitating discussions across large group sizes.

Price:

• A free plan is available!

• Paid plans start at $120 per year

Key features:

• Launch polls, surveys, and Q&A sessions

• Moderate responses as they come in from students

• Track registration and participation metrics

• Integrate directly with your learning management system (LMS)

11. AhaSlides

AhaSlides brings life to your presentations with interactive elements and real-time engagement! AhaSlides seamlessly integrates quizzes, polls, and other interactive components right into your slides.

Price:

• Free plan

• Paid plans start at $15 per presenter/month

Key features:

• Interactive polls and live quizzes

• Real-time Q&A sessions

• Customizable slides with user-friendly editor and template library

Parting advice

Making sure that your group stays awake during a virtual call is one thing, but making sure they’re active contributors to the conversation is another level of challenge! Consider testing the free versions of a few tools to find out which software fits your unique needs best. And don’t forget to get feedback from your team about which ones they prefer—the user experience front of the meeting attendee side might be completely different from your experience as the meeting host.

Using an AI meeting assistant and notetaker like Fellow will allow you to get meeting feedback from your meeting attendees every time the meeting ends so nothing halls through the cracks. With a bit of trial and error, you’ll be on your way to highly engaging meetings that people will be excited to attend!